coyote ugly
by milk ghost
Summary: "We hunt things that want to kill us for a living—the family business. We're nothing near normal." Blossom's missing, Buttercup is sick of all this Manpain, Brick has made a deal with the actual devil, Butch gets to kill things for a living, Boomer keeps getting doused in holy water, and Bubbles misses being a waitress.—ppg/rrb, aka the surprise supernatural au
1. the boys are back in town

**notes:** oh look, another thing that literally no one asked for ever. i don't think this has been done yet either? so how about that. **  
summary:** "We hunt things that want to kill us for a living. We're nothing near normal." Blossom's missing, Buttercup is sick of all this Manpain, Brick has made a deal with the actual devil, Butch is just along for the ride and gets to kill things for a living, Boomer keeps getting doused in holy water, and Bubbles misses being a waitress. Or, the Supernatural au no one knew about. **  
disclaimer:** well would you look at that. it's another thing i don't own. **  
and in addition:** major characters (i.e. the boys and girls) are about twenty-three in present time.

 _ **x**_

 **{** _guess who just got back today? those wild-eyed boys that had been away_ **}**

 ** _x_**

 _Townsville, Kansas  
1998_

Buttercup sneers at the boy quavering beneath her. There's already a nasty bruise forming under and around his left eye, and a tooth lying on the ground nearby. She'd knocked him one so hard, the loose thing had just come out for good. She cracks her knuckles, electric green eyes just daring him to get up. She's quite the sight for a five-year-old—wicked scowl, pretty green dress covered in dirt stains from rolling around during the scuffle, skinned knees, and scuffed Mary Janes glinting in the early afternoon sunlight.

There's a crowd of kindergartners gathered surrounding the scene, all oohing at the little girl who just beat up the toughest bully on the playground.

"You don't pick on people smaller than you," the dark-haired terror seethes. "It's not fair."

He huffs up at her, then sniffles, quickly brushing away any tears threatening to fall. There's grime all over his face from when she pushed him into the dirt, and he holds his stinging eye with a deep frown. "I'm telling!"

Buttercup's smile is something awful, truly a sight to behold. "Go ahead. Whaddya think Ms. Keane's gonna say when I tell her you were taking Elmer's money? Huh? And are you really gonna tell the teacher you got beat up by a _girl_?"

Several of the other kids start laughing, and whispered shouts of 'Mitch got beat up by a girl' ripple through the crowd. Her smile is ferocious, more of a smirk than anything. She's already making a name for herself on the playground—a living legend that will beat the living tar out of people.

Mitch glowers, bottom lip trembling.

"Aw, what's wrong? Is little Mitch going to _cry_?" some kid taunts from behind them.

"Buttercup!" a little redhead whispers sternly, pushing her way through the crowd, marching up as serious as she could be. Her pink dress matches her sister's, though it's pristine, no dirt stains on the fabric. "Leave Mitch alone."

A chorus of giggled behind them. A kid named Pablo chortles. "And now he's got a girl _standing up for her_!" More laughter ensues.

"Go back to playing _tea party_ with your stupid sisters!" Mitch shouts to Buttercup, humiliated. Tears are streaming down his grimy face, and he looks absolutely miserable.

Buttercup pushes the other girl back, a little unkindly. "Go _away,_ Bossy Blossy, and don't tell me what to do. You're not dad! Mitch, stand up here and face me like a man!"

Blossom back away, arms dropping to her sides. She clutches the messily braided pink friendship bracelet around her wrist, Buttercup's name right next to hers, looking hurt. Her dark-haired sister presses her lips together in a thin line and quickly looks away, not wanting to see the pain she's caused.

"BUTTERCUP ALICE UTONIUM!" said girl's face pales, and everyone scatters at the shrill voice of their teacher. She was especially livid, now, and heading straight for the guilty little girl in green, whose fist is still raised in preparation for a fight.

Sandra Keane narrows her eyes at the girl. "What on earth do you think you're doing, young lady?"

 _ **x**_

 **i** — _the boys are back in town_

 _Present_

Buttercup sucks on the back of her teeth as she fingers the knob on the radio of the old 1970 Camaro she's driving. Though not entirely her car, it's still her baby, she thinks lovingly—one that she's taken care of all these years. The familiar dust of her childhood home's county roads flies past, strips of dirt she hasn't traveled in at least four years. But nothing has changed, and everything's stayed the same regardless of time. September is dry grass crunching beneath her boots, a clear night sky full of stars visible from freshly harvested wheat fields, and golden-kissed grass dancing in the autumn wind. It's Kansas, and Kansas is always dependable.

The town is the same, too, she notes as the car rumbles through unnoticed. A diner that's been there for more than sixty years, a grocery store, Town Hall, the county police department, it's all there just as she knew it would be. She wonders, briefly, if anyone would recognize the seventeen-year-old girl in her. Does she only look different to herself, or is there more?

She taps her fingers on the steering wheel and shakes her head. Her destination isn't Townsville exactly, but a house just a bit outside of it. White siding, no picket fence, red shutters, a garden full of flowers—she almost needs it to be the same as she remembers.

The Camaro's motor groans she pulls into the drive, passing by a black mailbox that looks like it's seen better days. The car rolls to a stop, and she shifts into park before opening the door and standing. The house is still white, the shutters still red, but the paint is faded. The garden is dying, which she attributes to the season. There's still no white picket fence. There probably never will be. She steps out of the car completely and shuts the door behind her. The middle Utonium sister wonders if anything inside has changed, if her part of their room is still the same way she left it when she walked out that screen door almost six years ago. She's come a long way since then, and wonders if her younger sister has, too.

Buttercup walks up the cracked cement path and doesn't stop until she's at the front door. She pulls the old screen door open, and her fingers wrap around the knob, already turning it. It creaks, something she'd come to expect after so many years of living here, and she steps inside.

Not a thing is different. They'd been lucky, her father used to say on nights when the stars were all out and they weren't cooped up in some shoddy motel room. They had a home to return to after the job was over, after everything was said and done. They had each other. Most hunters didn't have a home or a family.

She sighs, and the sound of it echoes through the old house. Buttercup drops her keys on the side table and walks inside, taking a deep breath and fingering the worn leather journal in her jacket. The rough material is cool under her fingertips, the pages full of hours upon hours of research and studying, notes on the supernatural all carefully taken down by her older sister.

No one's home, maybe the place has been empty for a while, though the date on the half-full milk carton in the fridge suggests otherwise. It was bought recently, so someone must be pretty close to home. She wonders if Bubbles will be surprised to see her, here in the house they grew up together in, after so long apart. She's not so great at keeping in touch, never has been. But every time her fingertips ghost over a pay phone, or a crappy line in an even crappier motel room, or when she fishes her cell out of her pocket, she thinks about it. She thinks about picking the phone up and calling, about talking for hours, about coming home for good.

But this is what it is, and that is what can never be. She lives in between the lines, in shoddy, pay-by-the-hour motels and her older sister's car for a reason. There compartment in the trunk of her older sister's car doesn't carry a spare tire, but bags of salt, a sawed off shotgun, and a menagerie of other weapons. Instead of lip gloss and a dozen old receipts in her console, there's a vial of holy water and a dozen or more old receipts mixed in with a fake FBI badge and other credentials. She's doing this so her little sister doesn't have to, and this time, just this time, it's by luck of the draw that she's home because a case brought her here.

She stretches, a yawn slipping through the cracks of her tough exterior. Buttercup rubs her eyes with a back on her hand wearily. She's been running on about four hours of sleep for the past two days, and it's starting to wear on her again. The dark-haired girl pulls a glass out of the cupboard, turns on the tap, and pours herself some water. Downing it in one go, she places the cup in the sink and heads down the hall to her old shared bedroom.

A set of bunk beds and a twin, old posters, and a desk. Two thirds of the room don't look as if they've been touched in years. The bunkbed, which she and Blossom had shared, isn't any different aside from the fact that her top bunk is made instead of hastily thrown back. Blossom's books still line the shelf, and there are still college application forms on the desk. She hoists herself up onto her old bed and falls back onto it, wondering if she'll even be able to sleep.

This is where Bubbles finds her a few hours later, letter open clasped tightly in one hand. The blonde had been instantly recognized the car in the drive, and had seen the glass in the sink. But it was always best to take precautions. The letter opener falls out of her hand and she feels a sinking in her stomach.

"Buttercup?"

The girl staring back at her is different from before. Same vivid green eyes, same almost smile, but a different girl. Her hair is chopped off, barely dusting her shoulders and falling into her eyes. There's a leather jacket hanging off the bedpost that wasn't there when she left this morning, and combat boots on the floor. A plaid shirt over an old rock band tee, and jeans with a hole in the knee. It's her older sister alright, but not the way she remembers her.

Buttercup swings her legs over the side of the bed and pushes off the mattress with her palms. She looks at Bubbles, with her low blonde pigtails and waitress uniform, that worried glint in her eyes, and the smile drops. "Bubbles, listen. Blossom's on a hunting trip, and she hasn't been home for a few days."

Bubbles aggressively wipes down a mug and pours hot coffee into it before sliding it down the counter. Buttercup watches her from her seat on a barstool, hands wrapped around her own cup of joe. The blonde lightly slams a palm down on the counter, pretty face deadly serious, startling the rest of her usual patrons. "Tell me everything you know."

"Well," Buttercup begins, not really sure where the story stops and if it ever ends, "we were in Nebraska and got wind of this weird tall tale about people disappearing off highway 183 about a hundred miles from here, and…you know the rest, since we specialize in the unbelievable. We staked it out and never saw a damn thing. But then, one night she just decides to go off on her own, and she didn't come back. So I hiked it up to the spot where we'd been, and found the Camaro _deserted_ a few miles from there."

She pinches the bridge of her nose and heaves a sigh. "I searched that strip of asphalt for _hours_ , and there wasn't a sign of her anywhere aside from the empty car. She's out there somewhere, Bubbles. Blossom is out there and she's in trouble, but I don't know where the hell to begin looking."

The bell above the door dings, signaling that someone's stepped in for a bite, but neither of the girls pay it any attention. Buttercup takes a swallow of her bitter (just black, this morning) coffee and clenches her jaw, focusing on the strains of Foreigner's 'Hot Blooded' pouring through the radio behind the bar. Bubbles leans on the counter and props her chin in her palms, worried look in her eyes.

This is exactly why Buttercup hadn't wanted to drop in on her baby sister, but she needed the help, and Bubbles deserved to know.

Last night there'd been mutual exchanges of " _I don't want to lose Blossom like we lost Dad"_ and the girls had decided to work together to find their missing sister. But a fitful night's rest, one early shift at the diner, and two black cups of coffee later, they were still up a creek without a paddle. Hell, they were up a creek without a creek.

Bubbles shakes her head. "I haven't heard anything about people just up and _disappearing_ off the highway close to here," a pause. "And trust me, I listen."

"We're getting nowhere fast," Buttercup groans, rubbing her face. "Which is where we were to start with. We're even more lost than when we began."

Someone slides onto the stool next to her, and she raises her head, eyes already burning with a glare.

"'Scuse me, ladies," comes a disturbingly familiar, shit-talking drawl, and both girls freeze. "But I was wondering if you could stop talkin' for a moment so I can put in an order."

Buttercup slowly, painfully turns her gaze to the body next to hers. Oh, _of course. Of fucking course._ Six years, and here they were again. The one time she decides to come back, and apparently the sentiment had been shared. She's going to gag. Oh god, she's going to throw up.

Amused deep green eyes stare back at her, a contented smirk to match. He taps his fingers on the counter to the beat of the song playing, and grins, a whistle slipping through his teeth. "We-he- _ell_ ," drawls the second bane of her existence, right after supernatural creatures that want to fuck up everyone's life. He likes to do that too, but to her in particular. "Lookit what we have here. The Utonium sisters, all grown up."

Bubbles stares, blue eyes wide. "… _Butch_?"

He grins. "In the flesh, blondie."

"We don't want your business," Buttercup says suddenly, and attempts to shove him off the stool. God, he's gotten stronger over the years. "Get out."

Butch looks down at her in amusement. "Really, sweetheart? Rumor has it you just got back in town. Maybe I wanted to come see my favorite girl. Did you ever think of that?"

She's starting to look ill. "No. The thought has never once in all my life crossed my mind."

Bubbles is still looking at him in disbelief. It's been such a long time, even longer than she's seen Buttercup. "Butch? What are you doing here? Last time I heard…well, when I…there was some talk that you were in Louisiana."

"Keeping tabs on your golden boy?" Butch laughs, like there's a secret between all of them that no one else in the diner knows. There are—several, in fact. "Well, that'd probably be Brick if we're gonna be all technical and shit. Your boy blue, then."

He points over his shoulder with his thumb, right out the window to the parking lot, where sits an all too familiar car. "You're in luck, honey," his grin is wide, like he's keeping a secret even they don't know and he's about to let the cat out of the bag. "The boys are back in town."

 _ **x**_

 **end notes:** the summary is a bit misleading because blossom isn't missing the entire story. she's coming back, pinky promise. and it's going to be soon. **  
** **scenes from next episodes:** "oh, my gosh. this feels just like old times again."/"yeah, except back then our older siblings weren't getting kidnapped by homicidal vengeful highway spirits that plan to murder them."/"so like i said."


	2. (tell me why) i don't like mondays

**notes:** surprisingly, i am back. sorry for the inconvenience. "butch is already my problematic fave." yo, _same._  
 **fun fact:** this chapter has been sitting idly by, mostly finished, on my laptop for like the past four months. give me the official asshole badge, y'all. 

_**x**_

 **{** _and school's out early and we'll soon be learning that the lesson today is how to die_ **}**

 **x**

 _Independence, Missouri_

 _2009_

Buttercup hisses in pain and slides her fingers over the clip of her gun. Her hand is shaking, but not because she's scared. She's never been scared of much, really, and this strangeness has earned her the nickname of 'the toughest fighter.' But she's not feeling so tough now, not with a pierced shoulder and some _thing_ lurking nearby, waiting for the opportune moment to sink its teeth into her again. She wants to eat dinner soon, not _be_ it.

She grips her bleeding shoulder with her free hand, barely biting back a strangled gasp. They'd been wrong, so very wrong. It wasn't some kind of dark Druid or nasty magic ceremonial killings that've been going on around here. Her eyes nearly roll back in her head at the sudden and intense wave of nausea that overcomes her. Her hand flies to her mouth as she gags, knees threatening to buckle beneath her. It's no wonder why, either. There's a nasty set of fucking _teeth_ marks where the hideous thing had ripped into her.

A vampire.

She was going to die at sweet sixteen. And it was going to be by the hands—rather, rows upon rows of sharp _teeth_ —of a vampire.

"If I come back as a ghost," she wheezes, leaning up against a pole for support, "I'm sure as hell gonna be a vengeful one. Butch deserves _suffering._ I'll…I'll bring him seven times seven years' worth of…bad luck."

Blood seeps through her fingers and splatters the barn floor. It's oddly silent save for her labored breathing and the sound of the nippy autumn breeze outside. Things are looking pretty grim right about now. She can't die. Prom is next Friday and some hotshot senior guy somehow weaseled his way into being Bubbles' date. _Someone_ has to threaten the living shit out of the guy, because the four of them know that there's no way Blossom is cut out for that, and the Professor is…the Professor. Their redhead sister doesn't even have a date, probably won't go at all, in fact.

Mitch still owes her like thirty dollars from accumulated borrowing and three cans of Coke. Harry is giving her back the Blink-182 CD she'd lent him a month or so ago—and that'll be on Monday. The Camaro needs an oil change, someone needs to keep Blossom and Brick from stifling everyone with their repressed feelings that manifest themselves in explosive arguments. She still has so much crap to do, so therefore she cannot die.

The vampire—or, as they originally thought in the first place, a man named Kenneth Moore—slips out of the shadows and throws a punch at her. He'd been ugly before, sure, but now all the veins on his face are protruding, his eyes are a disgusting white, and he has the mouth of a bloodthirsty Great White.

"You weren't after apples at all," he hisses accusingly, mouth still dripping with her blood.

Right. He runs an apple farm. She'd forgotten.

Buttercup manages to fix him with a pissed, disbelieving gaze. "Do we really look like the type of people who'd be makin' applesauce? Look man, we're teenagers. Give us a break."

He looks at her with those nasty pupils and reaches for her shoulders. "Your blood tastes so good. Like nothing I've ever had before," a mouthful of a fanged grin that makes her insides crawl. "And I've had a lot."

She shoots him without even batting an eye. The bullet goes clean through his hand, so she puts another one through his knee, and another in his chest. They're not _silver,_ though, just regular rounds that hardly even slow him down. It's probably more of an annoyance than anything.

"STOP FIGHTING," he screeches at her.

She scrambles away on legs that are about to give out any minute, and responds by kicking him hard over the edge of the hayloft. "NO WAY, MAN. I DON'T FEEL LIKE BEING THE MAIN COURSE OF TONIGHT'S MEAL, BUT THANKS."

Buttercup feels a little lightheaded, and falls back onto a stack of hay bales. Everything is spinning. She's never been a fan of carnival rides that spin. They make her want to vomit. "God, everything smells like copper. This shirt is ruined."

Her head lolls to the side, where lies a wheat cycle. Those things were barbaric, she thinks, as the barn roof spins like a mobile overhead. However, they could also be useful for things other than harvesting. She reaches for it with her free hand, and it puts a strain on her shoulder. A blinding, searing pain shoots through her and she coughs, blood dripping her chin. She sputters and finally wraps her fingers around the handle, leaving slick, wet stains in the form of fingerprints.

"I'm supposed to be out dress shopping," she mumbles. She hadn't really meant it when she'd shouted that she would wear a sparkling dress over her _dead body._ "So if we could hurry this up…"

The vamp is already back, recovered from his very high fall, because fuck super speed and all that other crap that _is_ true about this particular flavor of the supernatural "I'm here to kill you" type of monster. "You're not just going to be dinner," he tells her. "You'll last for at least a week. You seem tough like that."

"Oh, goody. That makes me feel so much better," Buttercup sneers. "Waste not, want not, and all, you toothy bastard."

He lunges for her throat again, but she's got just enough left in her to swing that harvesting cycle right around. It cuts clean through, and she closes her eyes at the small _thump,_ followed by the sound of the body collapsing on the hay loft floor.

She lets the makeshift weapon slip from her bloody fingers. "Bye, you nasty bitch. Good riddance."

Buttercup groans and drags her good hand to her shoulder. It hurts to touch, hurts to be alive. She clenches her jaw and leans her head back. The hay soaks up her blood like a dry sponge as she fights to keep conscious. At this point, she's seeing stars, and pretty soon she won't be seeing anything at all.

"BUTTERCUP!" Butch's frantic voice is a bellow from down below. Filthy asshole. He's probably here to apologize after their fight. He'd said she wasn't cut out to be a hunter because she was a girl—and that she wasn't even a _good one_ (hunter and girl, that is). She'd punched him in the face and screamed that, _oh yeah?_ Well what did he know about hunting anyway? Since he always had his arm wrapped around this week's nameless girl, and his mind in the were several other horrible exchanges before he'd finally said he'd be better off without her and had stormed off—probably in search of their siblings to inform them that they'd found nothing. She'd stayed behind to steam until she cooled off, and that's when the vampire had attacked.

"Oh god," Butch says, crouching down next to her. "Holy shit. Buttercup? Sunshine, what happened? What—"

He glances down at the headless body on the floor, and her torn-apart shoulder. Her eyes are hazy, barely even open, and it looks as if she's bled a blood bank. He grabs her hand and clutches it, fingers tracing her cheek. "Buttercup. Sweetheart, listen to me. _Listen to me,_ okay? I didn't mean it. I didn't mean what I said about being better off without you. Fuck, Buttercup, I— _don't close your eyes_ , okay? Don't—"

Butch frantically looks over his shoulder. "BLOSSOM! BRICK! SOMEBODY! WE GOTTA GO TO THE HOSPITAL! WE GOTTA— _hey._ Hey hey hey. Look at me, Buttercup," he pleads, brushing his palm over her cheek and leaving it there. "Call me an idiot. Scream at me. Tell me how much of an asshole I am," he chokes. "Just—just _open your eyes._ Don't die on me, Sunshine. You can't."

Her lashes flutter against her pale cheeks. She looks like she's just seen a ghost. He wonders if she's going to be one, pretty soon. Butch takes off his plaid shirt and presses it into her shoulder. She's been losing too much blood. That's the problem. He feels like he's going to throw up. How long was she here, fighting off a goddamned _vampire_ while slowly dying of blood loss while he was off sulking? How long was it before it had revealed itself and attacked her? Had she screamed when it sunk its fangs into her shoulder? Had she been afraid? He should've stayed. He shouldn't have left.

Her blood drips from his fingers as he frantically pulls out his cell phone and shakily dials his older brother's number. It takes three tries before he finally gets it right, and he holds Buttercup's hand as the dial tone echoes in his ear.

Butch has never been so scared in all his life.

And then Buttercup closes her eyes.

 ** _x_**

 **ii.** _tell my why i don't like mondays_ —

 _Present_

Blossom wakes groggily. It's like sleep has a tight grip on her, and it doesn't want to let go for anything. She wearily blinks and almost chokes on the musty smell of, well, _oldness_ that overcomes her. She has the mother of all headaches, and her throat burns like hellfire. Well, metaphorically speaking. She doesn't actually know what hellfire feels like, and she'd rather not find out, thank you very much.

On top of all this mess, her neck is killing her. It's like she's been sleeping for days in some weird position. Her stomach rumbles hungrily, and she lets out a groan at the gnawing in her stomach. Why does she feel like she's been starved and dragged behind a train? Actually, make that tied to the tracks and run over by a train, more like. Her arms feel like noodles, or the wick of a candle that's almost burnt out, more than a little numb with a dull burning sensation slowly spreading through them as she comes to.

The redhead reaches for the burgers she'd picked up for Buttercup and herself while she'd been out. Her sister had decided to all but give up on the roadside disappearances, but Blossom had just wanted to try staking it out _one more time._ Of course, nothing had come of it, so she'd picked up dinner at a local drive-in and started back to the motel they were staying in. It wasn't the nicest place, but they hardly ever were.

Except there's a problem. Her arms won't move. Blossom raises her head and waits with closed eyes while the world spins around her. When she opens them, she's surprised to find herself chained to a wall in some dingy number she doesn't recognize. The Camaro is nowhere in sight, and everything aside from the floor where she's been looks relatively untouched.

Blossom feels the stinging sensation of panic begin to churn in her stomach. She pulls against the chains attached securely to the floor and drags herself as far as she can go. Whoever—or _whatever_ had taken her had locked her in some kind of stall. She grinds her teeth and jerks the chains again, but it's no use. Slumping uselessly against the wall, she leans her head back and lets her eyes slip closed. She's not even armed, let alone prepared for any sort of… _whatever_ is clearly going on here.

Okay, time for a rewind. Throwback to the last thing she remembers. It's always a good idea to mentally go over your timeline that you remember _before_ you find yourself chained up in a dingy room with no memory of how you got there. The redhead closes her eyes and thinks. Right. She'd been in the car with a bag of disgustingly greasy fast food from that little dive that just so happened to be the only thing open at one am. She was out driving the 183 in Nebraska searching for any signs of not natural happenings. Well, actually, she already knew something strange was going on—she just needed proof.

She and Buttercup had been on this case for at least a week, and nothing. Nada. Not a thing on the Supernatural Weirdness richter scale. They had mostly decided to call it quits, and were ready to skip town the next morning. But something kept nagging at the back of her mind that night, and so Blossom hadn't been able to get any sleep. So she'd made up her mind to take one more quick look. Just a simple drive-by (okay so _maybe_ like a two-hour stake out also, but) and then she'd be done.

One of Buttercup's outrageous rock tapes had gotten stuck in the deck, so Blossom had been listening to AC/DC for an hour and a half. The same thirteen songs over and over and over again. Except that there were technically sixteen songs, because somehow 'Shoot to Thrill' had gotten onto the tape three times—in a row. The excess grease from the burgers and fries had started to leak through the paper bag onto the seats— _the beautiful black leather seats_ —and her shake was almost sucked dry and all melted.

Her two hours were up, so she'd quietly pulled out of the weeds and flicked on her headlights. 'Shoot to Thrill' was starting again for the _seventh_ time in two and a half hours, and suddenly she was inspired to try and un-jam the tape deck. She'd been focusing on the dashboard more than the road, and so when she looked up, she almost rear-ended the car half off the highway right in front of her. Blossom screamed and suddenly her hands and the steering wheel were flying—turning and turning as the Camaro skidded across the road and swung around to a stop in her attempt to miss the vehicle.

Blossom remembers breathing hard and blowing some hair out of her eyes. She could see the car, empty and abandoned yet the driver's door was open and the lights were on, shining right into her eyes. She squinted, wondering what on earth was going on. The driver was nowhere in sight, and something about the situation seemed entirely wrong. A kind of wrong that she felt in her bones. Was this what Buttercup's famous "gut feelings" were like?

Brian Johnson screamed through the speakers as she looked left-right-left-right, but there was nothing out there except her, the car, and corn. Wait a second. She'd still been on 138, not far from where the other disappearances had occurred. It was exactly the same type of scene, too—abandoned car on the side of the highway in the middle of the night where there were no witnesses except the cornfields. It had happened again. It had happened again and she had missed it—

And then she had seen a woman in a white dress.

And then that woman had suddenly appeared in her backseat, and that is the last thing she remembers.

But it doesn't make any _sense._ All the victims before had been men—every age, every type, with seemingly nothing else in common aside from their gender—no woman or girl had ever gone missing before. This is out of the pattern. This isn't normal even for the not-normal, and for some reason that makes her feel worse than before.

If this was the work of a ghost—which is what she and Buttercup had suspected due to the local legends going around town—and she highly suspects it is, then something is off. More than usual, anyway. Ghosts have patterns. More specifically, ghosts have patterns that they don't stray from ever as recorded by any hunter in the history of the monster hunting business. This ghost always took men, but now it had taken her.

"Fuck. You've gotta be _shitting me_."

Blossom nearly has a heart attack.

Something rustles in the corner, and all the color drains from her face. She's not in here alone. She hasn't been this whole time.

(And the _mouth_ on this guy was—)

"Where am I? Where's my car? What the hell kind of bullshit is this?"

Deep, gritty and grumbly voice. Attractive, except for the exciting plethora of swear words he's stringing out right now. Somehow this voice sounds familiar, but then again she feels like somehow conked her in the head with a fire hydrant, so.

However.

He's most likely the owner of the stranded, lonely car she's almost crashed into. Which means that he's most likely the newest victim of a ghost she knows nothing about. Goody.

"Excuse me," she cuts in on his verbal slamming of some 'bitch of a woman in white', "if you don't mind, can you please stop swearing."

(It's more of a quiet demand than a question.)

A pause.

"Wait—who's there? I can't see you. Too dark 'n shit in this place."

Blossom huffs. "I'm your new roommate, I guess. Or you're mine. I'm not sure which one of us was here first."

"You're a girl."

Wow. _Wow._ Keen observation there Sherlock. Your powers of astute awareness will forever be remembered even after you're probably long dead because of a ghost. Thank you.

"Yes," she bites back a bit of impatience. "I'm ever so glad that you know what I am. I promise you I don't have cooties."

She hears a deep-throated scoff and more rustling. "Look, babe, you don't know what we're dealing with here. Something's out there, and its behavioral patterns are apparently out of whack or some dumb crap like that. I don't know how it works with ghosts, okay, but you shouldn't _be_ here."

Blossom agrees wholeheartedly, on all of his points. " _Ghost_? You know, you're absolutely right. I shouldn't be here because this ' _something_ ' you mentioned never takes anything but men, but life sucks sometimes so here we are, together."

"What the hell do you know about it?"

She narrows her eyes in his general direction. Something about talking with this guy stirs up a combination of feelings she hasn't had in a few years. "Only that the ' _thing_ ' that took us is actually a woman in white, and that she died along highway 138 somewhere around thirty years ago and has been taking unsuspecting men from the same highway ever since. She means to kill us, I'm sure. My sister probably knows that I'm gone by now, and she'll definitely come looking for me. I doubt she'll make it in time."

Buttercup was going to Lose It when she discovered the Camaro had been left on the side of the highway with the keys still in the ignition. Precious baby. And by that she means the car, not her sister.

"So I'd really love to stay and chitchat with you a little longer about how I am undoubtedly a girl, and how I have the headache to end all headaches, but we should probably go. Before we become the kill of the night," she mumbles, pulling two bobby pins out of her hair and leaning over the archaic-looking shackle around her ankle. "I'm officially breaking us out of here."

"What's your name?"

She huffs her bangs out of her eyes as she bends her make-shift lockpicks into place. "Blossom."

" _Blossom_? As in, _Blossom Utonium_? The professor's daughter? Do you still wear that stupid red bow all the fucking time?"

And in the span of the time it took for him to open his Big Mouth, Blossom's entire world comes to a messy, screeching halt. It leaves skid marks on her brain. Suddenly everything makes so much sense, and even though she knows whose presence she is in and that she isn't alone in this fight, it does not make her feel any better.

" _Brick_?!"

 _ **x**_

 **end notes:** that moment when you promise something and then you're not sure how to go about delivering it. (aka my _life_.)  
 **scenes from next episodes:** "you're still a priss, just like i remember."/ "and you're still a complete jerk—is anyone surprised?"/ "butch, who's driving the car?"/ "what the hell are you on about, dumbass? i've got the keys right—here..."


End file.
